Friday, October 29, 2010

The top 3 fashion trends that should have died

MANILA, Philippines - Most people want to put their best foot forward, and fashion plays an important role in accomplishing that.

But unwittingly, some people still follow fashion trends that ought to die or fade away as these just make a person look "not awesome."

Fashion designer and artist Patty Eustaquio shared on the ANC show "Tease" last week the 3 fashion trends she wished had died a long time ago.

Patty Eustaquio: 'Loose pants are so passe.'

Number 3: Flip-flops. "Don't wear flip-flops if you're not in the beach. I think that people have become way too casual about wearing clothes and it would be nicer to see more people wearing shoes around in public," said Eustaquio.

Number 2: Loose clothes. "Do wear good fitting clothes. Ill-fitting pants are the worst. And I still see so many boys wearing really loose pants. I think they're so passe," she said.

Number one: Going over-the-top. "Don't go over the top. I guess with the proliferation of so many fashion magazines, everybody wants to be different. They pile on all these clothes, they overdo their hair, their makeup, their accessories. Everything's overdone. And you're just hiding, sort of, in a mountain of things," said Eustaquio.

"So you're no longer an individual. You're actually a walking sculpture. It doesn't really work that way so much. So I think just be yourself. If you want to wear something different, go ahead, but be comfortable. Just be yourself."

In fact, dress for yourself and other women. Eustaquio added: "I don't really think of clothes as a way to attract men. I do think strongly that women dress up for other women because it's only the other women who will actually talk about what you wore."

Fashion and art

Eustaquio, a former president of the Young Designers Guild of the Philippines, knows inside out what looks good or not as she is also a serious visual artist. In fact she was named one of the Thirteen Artists awardees by the Cultural Center of the Philippines.

"I just call myself an artist. I just really make things. I love working with my hands. A lot of people would categorize between design and art. I like to blur boundaries," she said.

Eustaquio's fascination with art started when she was young. "As a child I was introduced more to paintings and more wall-bound works. I reacted to that and thought that I could express myself more in different media."

To her, creating art is like making a story. "I think of it more like these are words. All these different materials, all these different ideas in my head, they're words. And the way I put them together is making a story," she said.

Planning is essential for her. "I really do plan. I spend so much time planning my pieces. Everything is more or less written out and then as I make it, then of course things will change, accidents will happen, and during that time, then I just sort of accept, 'Ok this is how it turned out. How can I make it better? How can I achieve what I want to say?'"

Designs made by Patty Eustaquio

For Eustaquio, fashion and art exact the same of her. "I see fashion as art in the sense that the process for me is exactly the same."

Social issues

Eustaquio showed that one can merge social consciousness with art.

"My last show, I called the exhibit 'Dear Sweet Filthy World'. Basically it was my reaction to the calamities that have happened in the past year. I really made pieces that talked about the Ondoy flood. So I made these boat sculptures made out of fabric which I plasticized as well. Basically they look like shells of boats that had been fished out of swampy waters so they are like these mossy things."

She also made a cardboard piece that depicted the earthquake in Haiti, and painted 2 dead birds fished out of an oil spill.

Eustaquio's cardboard sculpture depicts the earthquake in Haiti

"They were all sort of socially relevant. This is actually the first time that I made a narrative about actual social events. My main interest in telling a story is how I made certain pieces that have a negative space in them so that when I combine all these different objects, there is a space for the viewer to complete the narrative," she explained.

Eustaquio said her favorite medium right now is cardboard. "I've been making these huge sculptures out of cardboard. I find that it's really easy to use. It's green. I don't have to use a lot of materials and it's recycled.

"So I think maybe these social things, that's why I started making these socially relevant narratives, is because they started getting to me and it's starting to show in my choices of medium," she added.

For Eustaquio, fashion and art have a deeper meaning. More than being trends, they tell a story.

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